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Ever since I was a young child,
I have always wondered why most commercial aircrafts
are of the same tube-with-wing design,
not other configurations, such as a flying wing.
In the past, the idea of a flying wing have been experimented with
by many aircraft manufacturers.
However, most of those projects were killed by external factors.
The German HO 229 was killed by the ending of the Second World War.
The American designs were killed by politics.
I set off to experiment with the idea of a flying-wing freighter.
I started by building the design in XFLR5.
I then exported the airfoils used to X-plane using JavaFoil.
The design is reconstructed in X-Plane’s Plane Maker for flight testing.
One of the numerous benefits of the flying wing configuration is the large wing area.
This greatly improve low speed handling even at high payload.
This also improve take-off performance.
Notice that both airplanes are using the same engines.
Other benefits include less wetted area; reducing drag.
And less structural requirement; reducing empty weight.
What does all that mean?
That means performance improvement.
The maximum take-off weight is increased while the empty weight is reduced.
This doubled the useful load compared to the C-130.
However, the take-off performance is also improved;
take-off distance is reduced by 11% even at higher weight.
Still, there is room for improvement.
The performance could be improved by the use of newer,
better airfoil, a trade secret for most aircraft manufacturers.
This design also retains a conventional tail.
Better airfoil and Fly-By-Wire could get rid of the tail,
further reducing drag and improve performance.